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Proposed Lion-Meat Ban Shines Light on Wild-Animal Meat

A lion-meat patty is shown at Il Vinaio Restaurant in Mesa, Arizona, in a 2010 picture.

Photograph by Matt York, AP

An Illinois state representative wants to ban lion meat from his state, raising an obvious question: just who is eating this stuff?

Illinois Rep. Luis Arroyo's Lion Meat Act would make it "unlawful for any person to slaughter a lion or for any person to possess, breed, import or export from this State, buy, or sell lions for the purpose of slaughter."

Arroyo says he believes at there are at least two sites in Illinois selling African lion meat, according to the Associated Press, though the legislator did not identify them by name.

Crawford Allan, an illegal wildlife trade expert for the conservation group World Wildlife Fund, said lions are farmed for meat in the United States to sell in restaurants.

"We have no evidence that lion trade in the U.S. is illegal," he said.

Though wild lions aren't killed for food, there's concern that weak or poorly regulated laws regarding the ownership, breeding, and trade of captive big cats in the U.S.—in particular tigers—could fuel the black market for big-cat parts, Will Gartshore, senior program officer for U.S. Government Relations at WWF, said in an email.

Added Luke Dollar, grant-program director of the Big Cats Initiative: "While these aren't lions that have a realistic chance of roaming the African plains some day, the use of them for food animals has to be considered ethically questionable."

Exotic Meat on the Menu

Of course, that doesn't stop some people from consuming exotic meat. In the United States, some people eat legally hunted black bear—which is not considered threatened—Hunter said, especially in late autumn after the animal has foraged all summer.

The U.S.-based company Exotic Meats and More sells such oddities as iguana, llama, camel, according to its website. A similar purveyor, Buy Exotic Meats, offers emu, yak, and snapping turtle, among other animals.

Eating African lion meat is unusual around the world—including on the predator's home continent, where the meat is not considered palatable, Hunter said.

Yet there is a taste for meat of threatened wild animals in other parts of the world—"too many species to list," said Allan.

For example, he said that rare species on the menu include great apes in West and Central Africa; sturgeon caviar worldwide; freshwater turtles and tortoises in Asia; Asiatic black bears for bear paw soup in China; marine turtles in Latin America and the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia; and some whales in Japan, South Korea, and Iceland.

Wild Animals Fair Game in Asia

By far the most exotic meat consumers live in Asia, where "most wild species are fair game," Hunter noted. "In Thailand in Vietnam, there are often wild meats available in restaurants"—including tiger.

"Tibetans wear tiger-skin robes; wealthy collectors display their heads; exotic restaurants sell their meat; their penis is said to be an aphrodisiac; and Chinese covet their bones for health cures, including tiger-bone wine, the 'chicken soup' of Chinese medicine," that article reported.

Hunter estimates there are between 4,000 to 5,000 tigers in captivity that are being bred for their parts and meat. (See pictures of tigers in trouble.)

Lion bones from Africa are being traded to China as a substitute for tiger bones for tonic wine as well, WWF's Allan noted.

Panthera's Hunter said that Illinois's Lion Meat Act would be more effective if it promoted "conservation on the ground, rather than banning a fairly inconsequential trade of lion meat in the state," he said. (Learn how you can help protect big cats.)

"People might spend 10-to-15 bucks on a gourmet lion burger—I'd rather that .... they spend that on a conservation organization working to protect cats in the wild."